How Publishing Upstart Mendeley Weathered Revolt and Became Part of the Paywall 81
Lashdots writes At Fast Company, Tina Amritha writes about the controversial rise of reference manager startup Mendeley, which inspired revolt among its users when it announced in 2013 it was being acquired by scholarly publishing conglomerate Elsevier. "Seeing that some of our most vocal advocates thought we had sold them out felt awful," CEO Victor Henning said recently over a tea in Amsterdam, where Elsevier, Mendeley's parent company, is headquartered. "I had steeled myself for some pretty violent reactions beforehand. After all, I was aware of Elsevier's reputation and the mistakes they had made."...
Elsevier, like other large publishers, loathed Mendeley's open model; In 2013, it had forced Mendeley to remove its titles from its database. The thinking behind its acquisition of Mendeley—for a sum rumored to between $69 million and $100 million—was simple: to squash the threat Mendeley posed to its traditional subscription model, and to own the ecosystem that Mendeley had constructed, with its valuable data on the behavior of millions of researchers. But Henning contends, "We've kept the promises we made when we began."
Elsevier, like other large publishers, loathed Mendeley's open model; In 2013, it had forced Mendeley to remove its titles from its database. The thinking behind its acquisition of Mendeley—for a sum rumored to between $69 million and $100 million—was simple: to squash the threat Mendeley posed to its traditional subscription model, and to own the ecosystem that Mendeley had constructed, with its valuable data on the behavior of millions of researchers. But Henning contends, "We've kept the promises we made when we began."
A sellout is a sellout (Score:5, Insightful)
A sellout is a sellout... period. Just admit that you saw the large cash out and couldn't walk away. We understand, you're human after all. Most of us couldn't walk away from $68-100 million. But, don't try to blow smoke up people's asses that you kept to your original mission. If you can't sleep at night because you sold out people who were counting on you, that's your problem.
Re: paywalls are not selling out. (Score:2, Insightful)
You are right about getting paid for providing a service. Except that when it comes to scientific publishing, at least in computer science and maths, authors, reviewers and editors provide free service and content to a company that will then sell it back at an incredibly high price to that very community.
On the other hand, I don't get why people revolt against Elsevier and not for instance Springer, who publishes the large majority of proceedings in CS following the same model. Or all other publishers for t
Re: (Score:2)
First, the situation is more complicated outside of math/physics/cs. E.g. in biology, getting papers is much more complicated, which has connections to computer literacy of authors, conventions in the field, and maybe also conditions of the journals.
Second, if you are an institutional researcher, there are good chances that your institution has subscription to the major places relevant for your research.
I hope it's a problem solved over time largely by natural selection. I'm much less likely to cite papers
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, to publish in a, not necessarily equally ranked, open access journal can cost up to ten times as much in publishing fees.
Re:paywalls are not selling out. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sad to see traditional publishers who pay for reporters and columnists be undermined by aggregators that leach content and don't do much
And the award for most ignorant post in the thread goes to......
Elsevier IS an aggregator that leaches content and doesn't do much--they don't produce ANYTHING. They've "acquired" copy rights on other people's research data by paying researchers NOTHING except the "prestige" of peer review (which they also don't do or pay for--they get the same researchers to do it for them for free.
They are the epitome of a leech. And the research community HATES them, but can't avoid them for a variety of institutional reasons (see also: publish or perish).
Added value (Score:2)
try to imagine the internet without any reliable search engines and no paywalls. In this model all the information is free and out there and is either completely unusable or impossible to locate and no chance of a concensus on what information is the highest value.
If there is no added value why do people pay then? They could put their work up on Xarchiv or just post it on their own web site or submit it to many other journals. When it comes to other journals the model is either author pays or reader pays
Re: (Score:1)
Researchers that rely on physical journal subscriptions are dying off. The newer generation just uses pubmed.
Re: (Score:1)
How else would you identify majority of the most important advances in the field? I agree, the system is far from perfect, many great papers get p
Re: (Score:3)
If there is no added value why do people pay then?
Are you naturally this obtuse, or do you practice at it?
They pay because the content has value--NONE OF WHICH IS ADDED BY ELSEVIER.
Elsevier engages in rent-seeking by locking up the value and then adding nothing to it.
This isn't complicated. There's a reason all of Elsevier's customers hate them. It's the same reason Comcast's customers hate them too--Comcast DOESN'T ADD VALUE to the content they deliver, which they also do not produce. In fact, they substantially reduce the value of the content they del
Re: (Score:2)
Repeat after me: information should be free. Not free to buy, not free to sell, just free. Free for all to use as they like. Free to use as their time permits. Free from coercion. Just free.
If that steps on money grubbing publishers toes who think they can take some of that and extract their percentage of profit, too bad. Maybe they should get a real job.
The fruits of research belongs to everyone on earth. Some smart guy or girl spent a lot of time reading, thinking
Re: (Score:1)
http://i.imgur.com/ZSArwvY.png
Re: (Score:2)
Why is putting research papers on a website such a big expense that a paywall is required? Hosting scientific papers is an area in which the open source cultists could become public heroes.
Re: (Score:2)
Profits are private, costs are public. Do whatever it takes to make a buck, for you never have to suffer the consequences of your actions or face your victims. That's the fantasy modern capitalism is built on: that the only thing that matters is you.
The problem is, every now and then you might catch a glimpse of the portrait showing your real face. Because you are nothing but the sum of your actions, them
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I'll give you $30 and a steak dinner.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
i have yet to see a dollar amount that matches what im worth.
I have. $0.00
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
Not everyone has a price measured in dollars, i assure you. I may have a price, but i have yet to see a dollar amount that matches what im worth.
Almost everything has a price measured in dollars. Including human life.* I assume you simply haven't thought about it (or are trying to brag), since it is unlikely you'd be one of the few people who wouldn't "sell out" to save millions of lives.
*you can spend money to save a number of human lives, and may or may not choose to do so. This sets upper and lower bounds on how much you value human life.
Re: (Score:2)
Only psychopaths think like this.
Nah, I bet you just realized that you value human life at less than $560 of your dollars to the life of one human being in a poor country.* But that makes you feel uncomfortable, so you prefer to drive that sort of thought out of your mind.
*According to a random study I found on the internet:
A 2006 study estimated the cost per DALY [year of healthy life] averted with the traditional EPI vaccines ranges from US$ 7 to US$ 438 The cost per death averted ranges from US$ 205 in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa to US$ 3,540 in Europe and Central Asia.
So if you choose the most cost-effective vaccine to save 80 years of life, you could spend $7*80 = $560.
Re: (Score:2)
...but $69-100 million goes a long way to ease the pain.
Indeed. Money doesn't bring happiness, but it makes unhappiness quite comfortable.
Another story please (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do we give attention or care to some sellout? They sold out, they go take their millions and be forgotten. You let go what you created that was good. Get lost, you are no longer worth my time.
Re: (Score:1)
Why do we give attention or care to some sellout?
Because often we see people saying "trust me, this is going to be this way forever! really!"
Remember folks, if you willingly put your testicles on their hands, don't complain when they crush them.
You are now part of the 1% (Score:1)
Take your $$ and run - long and far! You sold out your principles for 30 pieces of silver. Deal with it!
Re: (Score:1)
That means a single filer who made $343,927 or more in 2009 is in the top 1 percentile. A married couple with two kids and combined earnings of $343,927 or more also was among the top earners in the country. The 2009 figures are the latest the IRS has tallied. Filing of returns for tax year 2010 didn't officially close until Oct. 17. Read more: http://www.bankrate.com/financ... [bankrate.com] Follow us: @Bankrate on Twitter | Bankrate on Facebook
http://www.bankrate.com/financ... [bankrate.com]
Re: (Score:2)
One percent of what, the world? I own my house and there is no way I am part of the 1% of the US, or even my state.
You also have to consider COL. Due your numbers with cost of living factored in.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
cost of living changes things of course locally, having a million bucks in silicon valley for example probably only puts you in the top 25%, however if people want to keep talking about the "1%" perhaps they should know what they really mean are the ".001%"
Re:You are now part of the 1% (Score:5, Informative)
Read your own bloody link in the future.
It's $350k in income per year, not in net worth. There is a massive difference between the two. A house counts for the latter and not the former.
According to this article you need around $8 million in net worth to be part of the 1%:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/4880064... [cnbc.com]
So no, a house doesn't cut it.
Re:You are now part of the 1% (Score:5, Informative)
No I think your maths is broken.
Current world population 7 billion. 1% of 7 billion is 70 million.
Credit Suisse estimates world wealth at over $250 Trillion - https://publications.credit-su... [credit-suisse.com]
According to Oxfam (biased towards putting the wealth into the 1% category) 48% of the worlds wealth is held by the top 1% - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]. 48% of $250 Trillion is $120 Trillion.
$120 Trillion / 70 million is $1,714,285. Which shows if you want to get into the top 1% you need nearly 5 times as much money as you suggest.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Others have pointed out your math error. You, or others who share your opinion, seem to be making the same mistake over and over.
Here's a real statistic:
https://amourtan.com/2013/02/g... [amourtan.com]
350k puts you in 5.88%. To get to 1%, you need 800k.
You have got to realise that even on Slashdot, which skews high-income due to tech being a generally high income field, lots of people don't have a net worth of 350k let alone 800k.
(Also, you have to realize that 1% initially referred specifically to income inequality in
Re: (Score:1)
In all fairness, I don't consider myself poor by any stretch of the imagination, but that value is still several times what I make per year.
Researchers don't see a dime in royalties... (Score:5, Insightful)
Researchers don't get paid when they submit a document to a peer-reviewed journal, they don't see a dime in royalties from the copyright licenses that the publishers sell, and they even usually have to submit a fee with any paper they send for publication (to cover the costs of peer review). This means that the publishers unfairly benefit from:
1) The grant-makers who fund the research;
2) the labor of the researchers/authors.
That the publishers are trying to claim that they have exclusive rights to the distribution and licensing -- and more importantly, that they're attempting to create a reef of minimum resources/energy required to gain access to research -- is ludicrous. Why aren't they sharing the $1.1 billion in profits they earned on the backs of the people who submit to their journals with the people who actually provide the content that the publishers paywall off? (Grant-makers should probably also benefit from this, in any profit-sharing situation.)
And more importantly, why are the publishers trying to impose a "minimum resources required to participate" bar on STEM? If the strategy is supposed to be to get underprivileged students into STEM, it's definitely not going to happen as long as the students are working from 10+ year old science regurgitated into textbooks.
I mean, at least with open-source software, a commercial venture that builds and supports a product based on any given open-source code cannot prevent other people (or the original authors themselves) from also sharing the code. That's the true meaning of open science: that the original author can benefit from the peer review they already submitted a fee to cover the cost of, and make the paper available themselves without assigning copyright to an organization that will profit from the authors' (much harder) work.
If the publishing industry actually had to pay what the material was worth, rather than shifting all the costs to the creators while profiting from what is essentially a basic administrative (arranging peer review, administering contracts) and mechanical (printing copies, running servers to make copies) practice, there would be no $1.1 billion in profit in a year.
Free the papers (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientific paywalls (preventing access to science that was funded entirely or partially by the public purse) are a crime.
We need every available quality mind, rich or poor, on some of our scientific and engineering challenges today.
Re:Free the papers (Score:5, Insightful)
It's scientific knowledge.
It should be accessible to everyone, period, with the small exception, arguably, of extremely dangerous techniques such as methods of creating artificial super-viruses etc.
Science thrives by the collective discovery, review and improvement of knowledge. The more the disseminationof the knowledge is, the more valuable the knowledge becomes, and the more likely the knowledge is to improve faster.
Throughout history, some peoples' contribution has been to insert themselves as a toll troll on the bridge, even if the bridge was built by others. This is a despicable friction on the function of society.
Re:Free the papers (Score:4, Interesting)
There's always a discussion to be had about funding research and gathering income. What I think most people can agree with is that all this income should not go to some leeches that don't actually fund any of the research, just take the profit because academics need to be in the top journals to further their careers.
When it comes to countries leeching of others, I think there's serious benefit to being among the countries that "do all the research" even if you end up footing most of the bill. You get the best and most ambitious researchers because they all want to be where it happens, and you are far more likely to generate industry that can take economic advantage of this research. Just let public money create publicly available research.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe your neighbours open their windows too, and now they can listen to your radio too. It doesn't matter, you still get to hear the music you like anytime, so your investment has paid off.
Now maybe you think the neighbours are leeches who reap all the same benefits as you without having their own radio. Sure, they
Re: (Score:2)
Moreover, you seem to think that musicians are special because they *gasp* work hard (at least some of them).
Researchers work just as hard as musicians, if not more so. And they do it for less money than a musician is hoping to get for his little contribution to creativity in the world.
People who work hard get no pity from me. I work hard too, as do millions of people. H
Re: (Score:2)
Scientific paywalls (preventing access to science that was funded entirely or partially by the public purse) are a crime.
We need every available quality mind, rich or poor, on some of our scientific and engineering challenges today.
I agree in principle, but I think you're being a little over the top. Most contributors (rich and poor) to today's scientific and engineering challenges work in an institute that has access to the publications they need. For those who don't, they can access most articles by typing "[ARTICLE NAME] PDF" into Google. This works surprisingly often. If it's not available, just e-mail the author for a copy. Authors want their work read and don't give a shit about the pay wall. The paywall might be there, but it'
Re: (Score:2)
Scientific paywalls (preventing access to science that was funded entirely or partially by the public purse) are a crime.
We need every available quality mind, rich or poor, on some of our scientific and engineering challenges today.
I agree in principle, but I think you're being a little over the top. Most contributors (rich and poor) to today's scientific and engineering challenges work in an institute that has access to the publications they need. For those who don't, they can access most articles by typing "[ARTICLE NAME] PDF" into Google. This works surprisingly often. If it's not available, just e-mail the author for a copy. Authors want their work read and don't give a shit about the pay wall. The paywall might be there, but it's not really stopping anyone from getting what they need.
Yeah, that's closing in on the real issue. Restricting the readership of an article increases the risk that it won't be read by the one person who sees its critical flaw. That's why pay-to-read is fundamentally anti-scientific, even more so than pay-to-publish. As libraries move more and more to electronic-only subscriptions the monopolistic concentration of power in the hands of a very few companies presents an unjustified threat to our access to knowledge. Secret retractions, where the retracted paper s
Re: (Score:2)
Sell out of ;confidential information (Score:1)
Every one is collecting and selling your information. In many US states they collect information about drivers and sell it to companies even though privacy is violated. Banks do the same. So, thieves teal and sell to foreign governments. As long as political corruption is pervasive democracy or communism has the same effect. But you are nothing before big money and their buying power of bogus politicians. Live with it and. That is your destiny. No government is by the people , for the people and of the peop
Re: (Score:2)
Boycott ResearchGate: they're spammers. If you enter your papers into ResearchGate they will spam all your co-authors and FORGE YOUR NAME as the sender of the spam. Every time I've informed a colleague that "they" have spammed me, they've been horrified and unsubscribed from ResearchGate. It's no surprise that such an unethical company brags about Bill Gates being one of their investors.
Alternatives to Mendeley (Score:2)
Personally I have found Mendeley frustrating to use anyway. Seemed more interested in shiny features than working well. Wasn't very good at maintaining its bibtex file (which could be a problem using it with other programs) and expected you to have digital references only.
JabRef [sourceforge.net] is a great multiplatform reference manager which combines excellently with Docear [docear.org] for writing a paper/thesis/dissertation (Docear lets you organize your references and annotations as part of your outline). I have also found it wo
Re: (Score:2)
And of course, no "alternative to Mendeley" list would be complete without Endnote. (Although it's somewhat interesting that Mendeley started as "the alternative to Endnote" - I guess it's come full circle.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you explain that a bit further? I use Mendeley daily and am fairly happy with it, minus a feature here or there. For that matter, I don't understand what this article is on about. Yes, they were purchased by Elsevier. No, it hasn't affected their service. In fact, a few things, like the tablet client, are much better than they used to be.
What?!?? (confusing headline) (Score:2)
Am I the only one having problems parsing that headline?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Open Peer Review exists (Score:2)